Still Coping

This getting back into ordinary life after a month in a foreign country is for the birds.  Speaking of birds here is one that I am currently drawing, a Glistening Green Tanager (no kidding, that's what they're called and here is an image):

 

If I had a million dollars I would give you a green bird, but not a real green bird, that's cruel (apologies to the Bare-Naked Ladies!)   Yes, it's a bird of Colombia (and Ecuador) and I know I'm no longer in Colombia (and have never been to Ecuador).

 

I am still having to force myself to get moving and to remind myself to do all the little acts of cleaning up after myself that used to be habit.  One month of not having to do a lot of things for myself has left me spoiled, soft and with a colossal sense of entitlement of which I feel deeply ashamed.  I had my first bus ride today and was appalled not at having missed one bus and having to wait five minutes for the next one, nor of the two minute stopover the driver made on the way, but of my unreasonable impatient reaction.  When I got home I laughed it off, knowing again how good we have it here compared to many other countries.

 

I still tire easily but have also noticed that the more I do the stronger I feel so I'm not worried about it.  I walked three miles through our wealthy neighbourhoods as far as a coffee shop in Kerrisdale where I sat with my current drawing and chatted a bit with the owner and one of the customers for the better part of two hours, then walked not quite all the way home.  The owner is kind of an ageing but pleasant and affable gen-x-er (but aren't they all ageing, just like the hippies half a generation ago) and he was playing the Smiths almost nonstop it seemed and anyone who remembers Morrissey and the Smiths http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smiths will recall how utterly depressing they can be, so I mentioned to him that I haven't heard so much of the Smiths since Café S'il Vous Plait in 1994.  Another patron laughed at the analogy and for those of you who don't know about the fabled Café S'il Vous Plait here is a link:  http://www.yelp.ca/biz/cafe-sil-vous-plait-vancouver.  It used to attract a lot of young art students, musicians, writers and assorted misfits like me.  On my request he played the Kinks http://www.thekinks.info/ who are a lot more fun and great for getting ready for summer.  I have just had dinner and I am going downstairs in the next fifteen minutes to take my clothes from the dryer.

 

I did have one of my favourite (and occasional!) decadent treats today when I got home: two big steaming mugs of home made Vietnamese coffee.  Not exactly Vietnamese but still made with sweetened condensed milk, and not with real coffee since it was with decaf, but freshly brewed and very strong Colombian French decaf.  Ah! That exquisite clash of the richly bitter and the richly sweet that delights the palate with such incomparable ecstasies!

 

Getting back to birds I came across today the nest of a bushtit.  Bushtits, in case you don't really know, are a tiny species of chickadee, about the size of hummingbirds.  They fly around in maddened flocks bringing to mind the rampant and rampaging private schoolgirls from the 1955 British film, "The Belles of St. Trinian's."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgkQ_Ws-1Qs See it if you haven't so far.  It is a delight and hilarious with the Great Alastair Sim http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alastair_Sim (who played Scrooge two years earlier in the classic film version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol), in drag playing the headmistress of the school.  The teenage girls by the way are all engaged in a gambling ring among other vice.

 

Here is an image of the bushtit:

 

As I said they are absolutely tiny and pugnacious as all get-out.  Once I came across two of them on the sidewalk beating the shit out of each other.  I separated them so that they would fly off, as I didn't want them to turn into an easy snack for a marauding crow.

 

Here is an image of the nest I saw:

Neat piece of work, eh?  Like a ladies' purse,  I touched it and the texture was like soft suede or velvet.  The birds didn't like it and chirped up quite a fuss from inside.  Then one of them came out swinging a baseball bat at me.  (Just kidding about that last detail!